Start by placing the trousers/PJ bottoms flat on the bottom right corner of the scarf. Depending on how long you want your trousers to be, the top of the trousers should not pass 3/4 of the scarf.

Using the trousers as guideline, cut along with an 1-inch seam allowance.

Use this as template to cut the rest out of the scarf (roll-over image below for guide).

You should be able to cut four identical pieces from the scarf, following the edges.

Pair the legs, right-side facing

Leaving about 3 inches from the bottom corner (this will become a fly) pin the entire length of the outer-leg edge. Pin only up to the crotch on the inner leg edge.

Using a simple zig-zag stitch to prevent fraying (If you have an overlock machine or a serger, you’re one lucky bugger), sew close to the edges, extracting pins as you go. (Refer to this to do the crotch.)

Tidy up the waist, add an elastic (fold down and sew a waistband casing and pass through the elastic with the help of a safety pin); you can also secure the trousers with a knot or a belt.

I highly recommend watching this video before you even contemplate raiding the scarf drawer for a victim, because I personally made a mistake of not consulting the mighty internet (one does not simply walk into DIY without an appointment with Dr Google) and ended up with – I kid you not – three disfigured DIY ‘silk’ trousers with half-crotch/inside-out-seams/uneven legs*. Thank goodness the scarves were about £7 each from H&M, I’m filing that as ‘sewing-and-general-logic’ lesson fee.

If available, it’s best to use a pattern (for lounge pants or PJ bottoms) since then you can’t go wrong with fitting, but you can also be a renegade and go freehand of fashion dummy like moi (and possibly pay 3 scarves worth in lesson fee)

The length of the trousers really depend on the size of scarf you can find – even with a small-ish scarf you could use to make a pair of silk summer shorts (or cellu-lightning-frightening butt shorts, I like to call)

Taking a fine material as silk through the sewing machine might prove to be quite difficult in the beginning, so do few practice rounds with the left-over scarf bits after cutting out the pattern. Although I guess by then it’s too late to turn back and you might as well butcher the poor scarf

I loooff this. I can sew but only very basic things like fixing up a hole in a stuffed animal or something. This iz TALENT. One day when I’m drunk enough, I will attempt it. Hahaha. (After consulting the internet of course!)

That reminds me of my old sewing machine…actually, it was my moms sewing machine, and it seemed to love throwing that in my face. It was quite temperamental with me, no matter WHAT I tried to make, but as soon as my mom sat down in front of it, it worked like a dream and I ended up looking crazy. :/

But, in response to the actual content of this post, I’ve really been wanting some of these, so thank you for the slight push I needed to go on a thrift store hunt and get to work!

Ditte

June 10, 2012 at 10:30 am

I think i would use a pattern for trousers, because the back part should always be bigger than the front, so there is room for your butt :)

Oh yeah, after four tries, me too – but I personally don’t know the first thing about using patterns and I’m sure it’s the same with a lot of people (I guess these ‘fashion DIYs’ are meant to work for everybody with half a brain) so fingers crossed an elastic waistband can be a generous enough solution! x

I want to attempt at this DIY so bad but I am awful at sewing – even on the machine. Scarves are so pretty especially those that comes in nice prints like such, and print is going wild right now. I should just start learning..or maybe you can write a tutorial to sewing for dummies?

I think I need someone to write ME tutorial for sewing for dummies, I’m horrible at it myself! Plus, that sewing machine is from the 80’s and can barely do a straight line… in any case I think you should just give it a go – if I can do it, you can too!

The trousers are gorgeous, but I always wonder how ‘sustainable’ this type of DIY actually is, on a large scale? If people go to H&M to buy scarves to make some trousers, that’s not really much different from going to H&M to buy trousers, at least in terms of (new) materials used. Most people without much experience of sewing will probably screw up the first scarf or two – or three – anyway, so I suppose that’s a win-win for H&M.

Don’t get me wrong – DIY is fun. Lots of fun. And anything that connects a person to the garment she’s wearing on a more personal level (“I made these! by myself!!”) is good. But I’m always a bit wary when something like H&M pretends to be promoting something that’s ostensibly sustainable, because their own business model relies on everything unsustainable. They don’t REALLY want you to repurpose your old clothes or recycle flawed clothes for material or turn a thrift shop scarf that nobody wanted to buy into something fabulous. They obviously want you to buy THEIR stuff, and the more of it, the better.

I guess it does seem that way at the end of the day, but I think it’s important to remember that I was the one proposed this DIY and was going to share it with my readers, H&M or no H&M. Having shopped around in thriftstores and vintage stores for scarves that might be suitable, 1) it’s surprisingly difficult to find a scarf a size big enough to make a pair of palazzo trousers as intended, and 2) vintage store scarves would actually cost more than H&M’s. So although it does seem that it’s some kind of win-win scenario strategy for H&M (ironic, eh?), it’s really up to the readers to dig in their wardrobe, dig at the nearest thriftstore or dig at a high-street store. If you read the article along with Honestly…WTF‘s DIY on the other page, it’s really just presented so you use what you have and repurposing them to suit the ‘current trend’ that H&M might be championing (Boho, this season, apparently). x

It’s surprisingly hard, isn’t it, to find really large scarves? I wanted to do Palazzo style pants and went into about four vintage stores/thrift shops… all you can find is small ish ones. Then I found one in H&M, which is that one in the feature – the humongous scarf! I’m not entirely sure if they still have them in stores but you should definitely check it out – if they had that before I’m pretty sure they have other patterns too!
Thank you so much for adding me as one of your favourite blogs, such a pleasure!

Oh, wow. I saw your pyjama pants tutorial in the magazine and gave it a try tonight with the exact same scarf (yeah, I can be that lazy, copying the whole thing). Anyway, I am just happy to see that I am not the only one getting confused when sewing the two pieces together. :) The pattern on the side would now be on the front on one leg and on the back on the other. It also turned out to be a wee bit small, so I gave up on it…until the weekend at least, but congrats to your second pair too!

Yeaah it does get confusing when it gets to the crotch area, doesn’t it! The video really does help, now that I look at it… but I had to un-do a lot of stitching when doing the magazing version!
Glad to say the learning curve is quite steep with the DIY, as long as the scarf/sewing machine behaves!

@Shini, Thanks for replying. That does make sense! And just to clarify, I wasn’t criticising this tutorial in any way – I think it’s a fab idea and the end result is just lovely. I’ve just been thinking about this kind of thing regarding DIY in general lately. I think all DIY is good, for many reasons, but it’s often presented as sustainable even when the materials are not ecological. (Or the intent: very often I see “hey, let’s take this perfectly good new t-shirt, shred it into something trendy, and then throw it away!” presented as “recycling”…)

But of course, in the end it makes little difference whether one gets the materials from H&M or from the fabric supplies store – there’s nothing automatically better about the latter.

P.S. By the way: large silk scarves may be hard to come by in thrift stores, but what about rayon scarves, kaftans as such? I actually think rayon is a much more pleasant and summery material than silk – IMO, of course.

Ohhh yes, don’t even get me started on this one – it peeves me so when a lot of ‘DIY’s are just glue gun solutions: make a dress, let’s glu-gun the seams! make shoes, let’s glue-gun the soles! It’s sure upcycling or recycling or just plain cyclin but it sure isn’t ecologically sustainable or even JUST purely sustainable. Using paint on clothes – sure, looks good, but are you going to wash it and wear it again? It seems that DIY itself has become a trend, and ironically the main reason I stopped doing so many was simply because it was really costly to get the materials. At the end of the day it’s more satisfactory just to purchase the ‘inspiration’, rather than do a badly sewn, surprisingly-costly, and ‘sustainable-but-not-really’ (and looks crap most of the time) DIY. Defeats the purpose.

Large silk scarves – haha I think I meant just large scarves, it’s the size that’s hard to come-by! About 80% of the ‘silk’ scarves I found in shops (highstreet, vintage, thrift) are rayon or cotton anyway, including the H&M ones used in the tutorials, well naturally. Kafkans, now that’s an idea! x

Ana

June 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm

Lovely!! It´s a great diy (specially whith a really looong scarf, to obtein a really looong and fresshh trouser for those hot summer days which help to hide impertinent hairs with a light elegance… Thank you thank you thank you thank youuu Shini! :)
Big hug from Canary Islands, Spain.

They are very cute and if you want to make sure the fit is perfect, then trace the pant onto paper first and you can correct the lines and make sure they are straight. Also your back crotch should be longer than the front. They are very adorable! Keep up the good work!

yUuup that’s what Kit said too, it’s like watching someone do a tutorial on how to make a website using Microsoft Paint. I understand the pain. But I guess that’s why we call it a ‘DIY’ and not Bachelors in Patterncutting! ;)

[…] find tons of in almost any thrift store), and the larger the scarf the longer your trousers can be. This tutorial by Park & Cube shows you how easy this is to do, but make sure to follow their advice to measure twice, cut […]

[…] terms of garment construction and produce end-results that you might actually wear more than once. Remember this H&M panther scarf? Turns out there’s a lot more ways to transform it with just a few tools at home – for […]

[…] terms of garment construction and produce end-results that you might actually wear more than once. Remember this H&M panther scarf? Turns out there’s a lot more ways to transform it with just a few tools at home – for this one […]

Ah this will only really work with a scarf of a certain size – the trick is to go around the scarf, every time leaving a bit of space
Here’s a template that I hope might explain things better: http://bit.ly/11X2Kwc

I recently found your website, and fell in love with it. I never thought that a scarf could be transformed into something totally different. I’m going to try this out soon and see how it looks shorter. Pics are beautiful xx

I do not even understand how I ended up here, but I believed this publish
was once great. I don’t recognize who you’re however definitely you’re going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already.
Cheers!

[…] pairing them with warmer pieces until the weather follows suit. I am dying to take a crack at this DIY Silk Scarf Trousers tutorial as seen on Park & Cube. Most likely, I’ll be making a longer wide leg version like the […]

Aleks

April 25, 2015 at 10:06 am

hey,
thanks for the inspiration… where have you find the example trousers in the first pictures?
what kind of brand are these trousers from?

That is reɑlly attention-grabbing, You are an overly skilled blogցer.
I have jⲟіned your feed and look forwаrd to searching for extra of your ցreat post.
Aԁditionally, I һave shared your site in my social networks